World renown queer researcher to Bergen

Welcome to an open seminar with Jack Halberstam on queer temporalities.

Photo:

~via inperfectu.com

Jack Halberstam is Professor at Department of English and Comparative Literature and the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Columbia University.

The talk will amplify some of Halberstam’s critical thinking about temporality and politics. Presenting three examples of “exit routes” from the current formulation of politics and violence, he offers a new vision for unbuilding the world.

Titel of the talk: On Dereliction, Destitution and the Unbuilding of the World

“For so long we have proposed considering the politics of this or the politics of that – the politics of transgender, the politics of sex, the politics of performance, the politics of resistance – what if politics itself, as a concept and a framework is not the solution but the problem. In other words, what if this need to legitimate everything via the political as we currently understand politics (activities associated with governance) is part of the problem in that it leads only to certain kinds of projects — the propulsive projects that engage making, doing, being, building, becoming, knowing, declaring, proposing, dealing, moving and so on. At the same time, this definition of the political disallows other projects that involve unbuilding, unmaking and destitution and declares these to be violent and worthless. Using three examples of “exit routes” from this current formulation of politics and violence, I offer a new vision of unbuilding the world”.

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From Halberstams web page:

Halberstam is the author of six books including: Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters (Duke UP, 1995), Female Masculinity (Duke UP, 1998), In A Queer Time and Place (NYU Press, 2005), The Queer Art of Failure (Duke UP, 2011) and Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal (Beacon Press, 2012) and, most recently, a short book titled Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variance (University of California Press). Places Journal awarded Halberstam its Arcus/Places Prize in 2018 for innovative public scholarship on the relationship between gender, sexuality and the built environment.